In a close shave, Brazilians go 1-2

Da Matta edges Junqueira for 3rd straight win

July 01, 2002|By Skip Myslenski, Tribune staff reporter.

The Brazilian drivers in the CART series gathered early Sunday morning and watched together as Ronaldo scored a pair of goals to lead their country to the World Cup title. Then, in the warm embrace of patriotism, they decided to take on Ronaldo's look, so each shaved all of his head save for a small triangle just above the brow.

This was a dubious tonsorial move, leaving them all looking ready for boot camp. But Sunday afternoon, two of them celebrated even further at the Chicago Motor Speedway, where Cristiano da Matta ran away to easily win the Grand Prix of Chicago.

It was his third straight victory of the season and raised his lead in the championship race to 25 points. Just .639 seconds behind him was countryman Bruno Junqueira. Scotland's Dario Franchitti finished third, which left him beaten by two Brazilians, but later he said: "I felt quite good up on the podium today looking at Cristiano and Bruno. They look like '80's pop stars."

"I don't know who started [the ball rolling toward the haircuts]," da Matta said. "Someone just screamed, `Let's do hair like Ronaldo,' then three or four scissors showed up and a machine, and a half-hour later no one has any hair. But this is nothing for a world championship. Hair grows again, right? It's not my biggest concern right now."

The very survival of Sunday's race was a concern earlier this year when the speedway's owners announced they were canceling the event. But then CART stepped in to rescue it and to promote it itself, and a respectable crowd of 25,268 turned out on an inhospitable summer day.

But the Grand Prix itself produced minimal excitement and no passes for the lead, and eventually was little more than a glorified pit-stop competition. Franchitti and Alex Tagliani, da Matta and Tony Kanaan, Junqueira and Adrian Fernandez. They were the six fastest qualifiers for this event and--after a first-lap crash between Kenny Brack and Jimmy Vasser was cleaned up--that was their order as they rolled into the pits for the first time.

Tagliani and da Matta, Franchitti and Junqueira, Kannan and Fernandez. That was their order coming out of that stop and--more than 65 laps later--that is just how they rolled into the pits for the second time. Da Matta exited this one with the lead, ahead of Junqueira, Tagliani and Franchitti.

"It was so hard to pass out there. The only place to pass was in the pits," Junqueira said in a statement after being rushed to the medical center with dehydration at race's end. "My team gave me great pit stops and helped me move."

"I had the car to win today, no doubt about it," said Franchitti. "But every time we came into the pits, we lost position. I'm not happy. Today was just not acceptable."

Tagliani fell back after a brush with Paul Tracy, but da Matta, Junqueira and Franchitti were running 1-2-3 entering the third and final pit stop.

"Driving is always a team sport," da Matta said. "But today, more than any other race, they were very important."

His team then proved its importance, getting him out still in first. Junqueira and Franchitti were right behind him, which is how they rolled to the finish.

"You just can't pass out there," Michael Andretti had already uttered after leaving with mechanical problems.

"It's impossible to pass," Christian Fittipaldi had echoed after his tire fell off following a pit stop.

"I certainly couldn't pass anyone today," Franchitti said. "I couldn't even get close enough to make a move. That is a problem for the series."

But that left da Matta with no problems as he rolled to a routine win, and so again he was asked to talk about his interesting hairdo.

"I think I have to leave it on for one more week," he said. "After that, I think I shave it off. I don't want people to think I'm crazy."